


I Keep The Gun With Me

by grocketinmypocket



Category: Black Lagoon, Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Basically Lots Of Big Fucking Guns, Explicit Language, F/M, Girls with Guns, Gun Violence, Gunplay, Rocket And Revy Bond Over Their Love Of Guns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grocketinmypocket/pseuds/grocketinmypocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revy probably should have asked more questions when Balalaika sent them to look around and report back if they saw anything "non-human." By the time she ran into the tree-guy and the raccoon with the big fucking gun, she was <i>sure</i> she should have asked more questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **BAD NEWS, FOLKS. My fics are officially being abandoned. I'm sorry that I won't be finishing them, but my life has changed a geat deal in the year or so since my fics were written and I no longer have the time to write for fun.**
> 
> Welcome to grocketinmypocket's first crossover fic! Of course it's for an obscure anime fandom, because I never do anything the easy way.
> 
> If you are unfamiliar with [Black Lagoon](http://lagooncompany.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Lagoon_Wiki), here's what you need to know: [Revy Two Hands](http://lagooncompany.wikia.com/wiki/Revy), the character I've paired up with Rocket, is a gunfighter/thug for Lagoon Company, Malaysian smugglers who hide under the cover of a "salvage company" running out of the port city of Roanapur. The city roils with contant gang warfare between foreign cartels, the Triad, and Hotel Moscow, a Russian cartel led by a fire-scarred woman known as Balalaika.
> 
> Revy herself is as hard-bitten as they come, foul-mouthed, with few morals and no compunctions about pulling the trigger on anyone who ends up in front of her guns. At times, Revy goes on vicious rampages, shooting indiscriminately, and her boss Dutch refers to this as "Whitman fever," after [Charles Whitman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman), a man who went on a shooting spree from the clocktower of the University of Texas on August 1, 1966, killing 16 people and wounding 32.
> 
> All you need to know about Revy can be found in [these](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCPiApxZsk) [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXSEClmZfc) Youtube clips. (Warning: extremely foul language and lots of shooting people.)
> 
> The title of the story is taken from the lyrics of ["Red Fraction,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOmNWL5nzE4) the opening theme of Black Lagoon.
> 
> This fic carries a Mature rating due to copious and extremely foul language and graphic gun violence, and contains brief, non-graphic mentions of child abuse and sexual assault.

Nobody knows what it is, go the whispers, but it's valuable. More than anything anyone could possibly imagine, they say. Without a doubt, the most valuable thing the cartels and the Triad and even Hotel Moscow have ever fought like rabid dogs over. The bosses are getting careless; in Roanapur that means not just bagmen and shooters dying in the streets by the tens and twenties, the shit that happens every day -- but civilians. Children. All the free agents are throwing in for the prize, too. Hunting for Greenback Jane in a town gone mad with money-lust and bounty-fever was nothing; the bars and hole-in-the-wall hideouts are filled to bursting with mercs and and specialists and bounty hunters, like a corpse swelling with rot. All of them on edge, not knowing what they're even after, but knowing the prize, if it even exists, will be worth whatever they have to do to win it. 

When the carcass bursts and spills its sick mess, it'll be a free for all. "Whitman fever" on a city-wide scale. 

And nobody even knows what it is.

Dutch wants to haul anchor and set themselves up somewhere out in the middle of a whole bunch of empty water. Pack plenty of food, clean water, booze. Safer than staying here, waiting to catch a bullet, he says. Revy thinks it's probably too late for that. Every time the office phone rings, everyone jumps. Everyone expects it to be Balalaika, demanding their happy little band of piratical assholes pick a side. Hotel Moscow's side is probably the closest to you could get to picking a winner, but you still have to make it through the job alive, if you want to celebrate with the victor. And if they bug the fuck out, float through this shit safe and sound, they'll be dead meat when Balalaika catches up to them again. And she will. _Fucking Russians,_ Revy thought. They're dead either way, as far as Revy can figure it: get killed _for_ the fucking Russians, or get killed _by_ the fucking Russians.

So they stay, Rock answering the phone like a prissy little goddamn professional in his fucking tie, who wears a tie here? In this fucking heat? Only this asshole. Revy believes in being comfortable: tank top, cut off shorts, dual shoulder holster rig for her Berettas, combat boots, hair in a ponytail -- bam, as comfortable as she can get in the muggy Malaysian swamp-air that hangs over the port. And if it just so happens that all that exposed skin and long leg and bouncing boob makes men drool, makes 'em stupid and a little slower on the draw with their guns than they should be, serves 'em right. Not that Revy Two Hands needs an edge, but it's funny to see them hit the pavement with that dumb lust-fuzzed look in their eyes after she fucks them with her .45s, which is the only fucking Revy ever really cares to do.

The phone rings, and she hears Benny drop what sounds like a full bottle of beer with a yelp, in his shadowy back room lit with only monitor light. They're all on edge, waiting, as Rock picks up the phone and says, cheerfully as fucking ever: "Lagoon Company, Salvage and Hauling, how may I help you?" Silence, and they all watch his face. Stupid fucker has no poker face whatsoever, and Revy sees horror steal into his eyes as he listens to the other end of the phone. "Yes, ma'am," he says on a gulp. "Of course, ma'am. We'll be there as soon as possible, ma'am. Thank you."

"Was that her?" Dutch asks tiredly, no emotion left to put in his voice, like a man who has just discovered that his last, sweetest hope is gone.

Rock nods, lip trembling. Balalaika does not call, herself. Boris, her most trusted lieutenant, makes the calls. If she is on the phone, then something has gone very, very wrong. Revy doesn't need to be told; she gets up and grabs her bug out bag, plus a bag filled with all the other goodies and gear that she usually doesn't bother bringing on a normal job but hell if she's going anywhere near those crazy Ivan fucks unless she's loaded for bear. And with all the woo-woo mystery surrounding whatever this thing is that everyone's looking for, some of the more hard-core shit might come in handy.

Rock is fluttering around like a dumbass, already shaking with nerves, and Revy wants to shove him in a closet and leave him behind because he's going to be fuckall use when the shooting starts but Balalaika actually likes him so he goes. Benny should probably stay behind as well, and when he comes out of his little tech cave she can see it in his face that he knows it, too. He's a good enough shooter, but not on Dutch or Revy's level -- hell, who _is_ on Revy's level? Nobody. Not even Dutch.

Benny can take care of himself, but if shit goes bad, it's his job to keep Rock alive and out of her fucking way so that Revy doesn't get distracted by the office sidekick taking a bullet to his kind, friendly, stupid face. It's pretty much all going to be on Revy and Dutch, whatever Balalaika is asking them to do, and Revy briefly considers calling Eda, then dismisses it. She needs that cunt Eda around like she needs a fucking weeping yeast infection, no matter how good with a gun she is. She's a fucking pain in the dick and besides, she'll steal the whatever-it-is out of Revy's hands quicker than Eda can find a stranger's cock to suck, so fuck that.

It'll have to be just her and Dutch, no way around it.

Once they've been admitted through the layers of security and bored Ivans and pass-coded doors, and they find out what the Russian bitch wants them to do, Revy is wishing for a lot more backup. 

"Take a walk. Look around. Report back to me if you see anything strange."

If it had been anyone but her, Revy would have barked a laugh in her fucking half-burned face and replied that strange is what you see when you walk outside in Roanapur, you stupid bitch. Instead, she kept her mouth shut and let Rock ask the dumb questions.

"What do you mean, ma'am -- strange?" He somehow manages to give off the air of a very smart, well-trained puppy, and for some fucking reason, Balalaika is fond of him.

"Alien," she says. "Non-human." She waits, watching them. Waiting to see if this not-so-well-trained pack of stray attack dogs will chafe at the collar, no matter how ridiculous. Hotel Moscow is very big on discipline and respect, and Revy feels like she's courting death every time she sets foot in the place, because she and discipline and respect are not friends. She wants to laugh, because _aliens_ , seriously, but she also doesn't want to die right now. She probably will die, later, maybe even today, but not now, not because she laughed in the Ivan bitch's face like an idiot.

"So we're supposed to look for aliens," Dutch says, big arms crossed stubbornly and a hint of rebellion on his face. It's a sham, of course, he's just as scared of Balalaika as anyone in their right mind is, but he has to put on the show for everyone. Being big and black and scary in Roanapur isn't enough, you gotta act the part. And Dutch is acting his part, even though Balalaika knows his threats and anger are nothing to her. She lets him save face, and answers pleasantly enough. She likes all of them, Revy included, for some goddamn reason, and it makes Revy's skin crawl to have her looking fondly on them. Revy may be a murderer and a monster, but Balalaika is so much worse and wet-red with blood on her neatly manicured hands.

"Yes," she says, and nods at Boris, the big quiet scarred Ivan she relies on. He knocks once on the inner door that leads to Balalaika's private office. Revy's only been in there once and will never go in there again, because it's where Balalaika edits the very illegal porn she gets from her contacts in Russia, and again, Revy is a monster, but not that kind of monster. Even Balalaika has limits, though -- no kids -- which is the only reason Revy hasn't killed her outright. That, and that Hotel Moscow would utterly destroy any trace of her that had ever existed, the minute she raised a gun against the Ivan cunt. Now the door opens and another couple of Russians wheel in a morgue trolley, covered with a sheet.

"What the fuck is that?" Revy can't stop herself from saying, because even with the sheet draped over it, she can tell it's a human size, but it isn't a human shape, and it smells like rotten mayonnaise marinating in the bottom of a dumpster full of dead fish. Boris pulls the sheet back and the smell gets worse.

Whatever it is, it's entirely gray. Even the blood surrounding the gaping chainsawed-looking hole in its chest, presumably cut by Russian machine guns, is black and gray and monochrome, as well as the mess of organs and meat inside the hole itself. It has a smashed-open helmet revealing a face that looks like the things they pull from the deepest parts of the ocean, all teeth and gleaming wet holes in the wrong places and more teeth. It's wearing armor that looks like it was pounded into place, right on the thing's body, and Boris reaches under the trolley and brings up a huge fucking gun, busy with protrusions and ribs and fucking _gills_ like it was grown, not made. Revy loses interest in the alien immediately, locked in on the gun, because she has never seen anything like this ugly, gorgeous thing before.

Revy steps forward unconsciously, reaching out for it like a woman entranced by a gurgling, smiling baby she wants to hold. She turns her head to Balalaika, hating to even glance away from this beast of a weapon, and asks, "Can I look at it?"

Balalaika nods, and Boris hands it to her like he's happy to be rid of it. It feels alive in her hands, warm and thrumming, and she turns it over and over as Dutch talks to Balalaika about the now-dead thing her footsoldiers killed yesterday. She figures Dutch will tell her what she needs to shoot at, like always, and studies the gun, memorizing it, tracing it with her eyes as she tries to work out its design, how it kills.

She wants it, more than she's ever wanted anything.

"Does it work?" she asks Boris, and he grimaces.

"It may, we don't dare fire it. It shoots bolts of blue energy that can tear a man in half," Boris says, as seriously as he says everything.

"Can I have it?" Revy asks, because how can she not? It's the most horrible thing she's ever seen and she's half in love with it, and she hasn't even fired it or seen it in action.

"No," Balalaika replies. "But you may keep any others you find, while you're working this job for me."

"So there are more of those things out there?" Rock asks, and he's not just green, he's gone absolutely _lime_. He would probably be puking on his shoes, if he wasn't standing in front of Balalaika.

"Yes. We believe that the object that the cartels and the Triad are seeking is not of this world," she says pleasantly, and Revy is so pumped about the possibility of maybe getting her hands on one of those fucking terrifying guns, she doesn't even give a shit that Balalaika is acting like they all of a sudden live in a superhero comic book.

Later, when the shit does actually go down, she wishes she'd been a little less interested in getting a cool new toy, and asked more questions about the fucking aliens.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her back-up now consists of a tree, a talking raccoon, and said talking raccoon's big fucking gun. Revy's day is starting to look up.

By the time Revy ran into the tree and the raccoon, the shit had been knee-deep for a while, and she was kicking herself for not calling Eda in after all, no matter how big a pain she was to deal with. She'd gotten separated from Dutch, Benny, and Rock, when they'd run into one of those monochrome alien assholes up by Chao-quan Market. She thought the others had gotten away okay, but she'd had her eyes on the prize: killing it dead enough so she could take that big fucking gun for her own. She'd taken off after it, leaving Dutch and the other two to fend for themselves, and after she'd gotten her hands on her new toy, she'd discovered that the market was crawling with those ugly fucking things and she was cut off from all the exits. Worse, she'd been so focused on the gun she wanted that she'd left behind the bag of goodies she'd brought.

She'd ducked into an alley, thrown herself down behind a dumpster, and come face to face with a little raccoon-like thing holding a gun even bigger than the one she'd liberated from E.T., pointed right at her face. And right behind him was a fucking tree, for god's sake. A moving, man-shaped tree. The raccoon was snarling at her, some kind of fucked-up alien language, and none of it sounded nice. She had her own new toy pointed right at him, and when she squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. The little furry fuck laughed at her -- that came through just fine -- and reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out something that looked like a bluetooth headset. He thrust it out toward her, demanding she put it on, going by the tone of his voice.

"Fuck, fine, give it to me, you stupid raccoon," Revy snapped, and yanked it out of his hand. As soon as she clipped it over her ear, the garbled alien language he'd been spitting at her cleared into something she could comprehend.

" -- derstand me now? Lady, you might as well put the gun down, it ain't gonna work for you, you ain't got the right DNA to override the trigger lock." For some reason, he sounded like he had an American East Coast accent, which was, strangely, the thing that struck her as the weirdest about this whole fucking fucked-up goddamn day: this alien raccoon-guy sounding like a little bit of home when he spoke.

"Shit. I really wanted to kill something with this thing." Revy put the gun regretfully on the ground, and kept her hands loose and free when she stood up, just in case it was necessary to draw down on the raccoon-guy. "So what the fuck are you supposed to be, an escapee from Disneyland?"

"Ain't no thing like me, lady. What about you, huh? I can see why you wanted that Sahkaraan gun, if all you got are those primitive little black powder pieces of shit."

"Hey! These are Beretta 92FS nine mills with extended combat barrels, modified 'em myself. I can kill your ass just as dead with' em as whatever that thing is you've got."

"You know how to build guns?" Now he looked interested, rather than angry. His huge gun whined as if it was powering down, and he lowered it away from Revy's face, finally. Looking down those four grouped barrels was making her asshole twitch. He was actually kind of cute and fluffy, when he wasn't threatening her, like a little walking teddy bear.

"I am Groot," said the tree guy, and raccoon-guy waved him off. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know we got a job to do, gimme a minute to talk to another professional, okay?"

"Groot, huh? I'm Revy. What about you, short stuff?"

"Name's Rocket," he said. "And Groot wasn't introducin' himself, that's all he ever says."

"O...kay. So, what's the deal here, why are there fucking aliens all over the place? It got anything to do with the thing everybody's lookin' for? 'Cause I'm assuming you two are aliens, too." Revy sat down on the pavement next to the dumpster they were sheltered behind, pretty sure the raccoon dude -- Rocket, apparently -- wasn't going to shoot her now.

Rocket was looking at her consideringly. "So you know about that? What, is it common knowledge or somethin'?"

"Not unless you work for the cartels, or the Triad, or the Yakuza, or fuckin' Hotel Moscow, or you're a freelancer looking to score the biggest prize ever. So basically everybody."

"Great. We were supposed to be in and out, Quill said. Fantastic. Now every Terran asshole with a pop-gun is gonna get in the way."

"So you're here for it, too," Revy said. "What the fuck is it? Nobody knows, but they all want it."

"Why should I tell you?" Rocket said. 

"Because if you cut me in on it, I can lead you around the city, show you how to stay out of gang territory."

Now Rocket looked regretful. "Wish I could. We're not gettin' shit out of this, it's official Guardians business. Our orders are to grab it and take it back to Nova Corps before somebody who knows what the thing is decides to use it, and destroys the whole fucking planet."

"It's that powerful?" Revy asked.

"Yeah," Rocket said. "I know, because me and some friends held it once. Took five of us to control it. If we'd let the guy who had it touch it to the ground, every single living thing on that planet would have died."

"Jesus," Revy said softly. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"How many people live on this rock? Seven, eight billion or something? They're all in danger if we don't get that stone. I can't cut you in, 'cause there's nothing to cut in on, but if you help us get the stone back, I'll build you the biggest fucking gun you've ever seen."

"Deal," Revy said immediately. "Where do you need to go?"

"Hotel Moscow. We got intel that somebody there might know who brought the stone to Terra."

"Fuck. Shoulda known you'd wanna go there. Shit. Okay, we gotta get out of the market, and then it's a straight shot up Pahang Street till we get to Ceylon Street, and we're there."

"We gonna be out in the public, or back alleys? We need to move fast, but stay outta sight. Me and Groot kinda stand out."

"We can cut out at least three blocks of the distance if we go through the indoor market at Bangsar Road. The stalls are crammed in real close, so we can duck and hide if we have to. It'll keep us off the street for at least part of the way. It'll take longer if we only use alleys, but it's doable. Maybe forty-five minutes to get there, if we don't stick our necks out."

While Revy had been talking, Rocket had taken what looked like a pair of flat, rectangular pieces of plastic from his pocket and spread them apart to reveal a translucent, flexible screen framed between the two plastic rectangles. A map of Roanapur was scrolling across it, reversed from Revy's point of view, and he pinched the display with his fingers to center it on the section of the city they now occupied. He traced out the route Revy had named, and then tapped what Revy thought might be some kind of communicator, clipped to his shoulder.

"Hey, Quill. I'm sending you a map of our route to Hotel Moscow. Got it from a local. Stay off the streets, stick to alleys. There's a squad of Sahkaraans in Chao-quan Market, got us cut off from the exits. If we can, we'll meet you at Hotel Moscow, ETA forty-five minutes, but it may take us longer if we get into trouble," he said.

"Got it. Drax and Gamora and I will head for Hotel Moscow," a male voice replied. "Watch your ass, Rocket. If it looks like you can't get past them, find a place to hole up and we'll come get you."

"Will do," Rocket said, and tapped his badge again.

"So who was that? Is he a raccoon like you?" Revy asked, imagining a spaceship filled with furry little guys like Rocket.

"That was our leader, Peter Quill. He's Terran, like you."

"So a Terran is like, an earthling? There's earth people out in space?"

"Quill's the only one I've ever met."

"Maybe I should go," Revy said, suddenly struck with the idea of getting off this grubby shitty planet and finding herself somewhere else where at least the grubby and shitty parts would be an exciting new kind of grubby shittiness.

"Maybe you should," Rocket said, and he was looking at her curiously, studying her almost. "Groot, gimme the back-up blaster," he said to the tree-guy.

Tree-guy sat up straighter, and the plates of bark on his chest began to shift and move, revealing a space behind them. Rocket slung his own huge gun onto his back, where it clamped down with a thunk onto some kind of magnet mounted between his shoulders, and scrambled up Groot's tree-trunk body. He reached into the recess in Groot's chest and drew out a compact, complex-looking little gun, as well as two cylinder-shaped cartridges. Climbing down again, he stopped in front of Revy's criss-crossed knees and held the gun up for her to see.

"To check if it's loaded and primed to fire, look at the indicator on the side. If it's orange, the gun is on safety. If it's green, you're ready to rock. This slider here shows you how much power is left in the cartridge. You can get about four hundred shots out of one cartridge. To change it, you press down here, and then slide the lever over with your thumb and let the empty drop out. Here," he held it out to her butt-first.

She took it and immediately copied his movements, checking to see if it was primed, and then dropped out the cartridge and replaced it a few times, familiarizing herself with the movement. When she was satisfied she could do it fluidly, without having to look while she did it, she glanced up at him to see him watching her with a smile.

"What?" she said, suddenly self-conscious. He wasn't leering or anything, but it was an admiring smile, nonetheless.

"I knew you were a professional. What's your line?"

"I work for a smuggler. I'm a gunfighter, mostly. If it comes down to shooting, nobody's better than me. They call me Two Hands."

"Nice," Rocket said. "You ready to lead the way, Two Hands?"

Revy got up into a squat, and then stopped before standing up to pull the Beretta from the holster on her left side and checked to see if the blaster would fit in it instead. Seeing that it would, she kept it in her hand and handed her nine-mill up to Groot, and he placed it inside the cavity in his chest before sealing it over again with his bark plates.

"I bet that shit comes in handy when you wanna hide something," Revy said approvingly, standing all the way up and checking her other Beretta for good measure before re-holstering it.

"It's saved mine and Groot's asses a bunch of times. Lead the way," Rocket said, gesturing as grandly as if he was asking her to dance at a fancy ball, not giving her a "ladies first" out from behind a filthy dumpster in an alley. He pulled the gun down off his back and did something to it that made it whine and hum, and Revy was kind of in love by now. Not just with the gun, which was pretty fucking sweet, and not just with the blaster, which she was going to keep no matter what Rocket said, but maybe a little with Rocket himself. She'd known him for ten minutes, and he'd treated her with more respect and actual interest -- and not in the boobs and butt on display, he acted like he hadn't even been paying attention to her body -- than most men she'd ever known.

Glancing around the corner of the dumpster, she edged out into the alley when she saw it was clear, and looked behind her again to see that Rocket had scaled up Groot's side and was standing on his shoulder. If he leveled his gun in front of him, his line of fire would be safely clear of Revy's head, and she filed that away as a helpful thing to remember. She moved out into the alley, hearing Groot's steps reverberating on the pavement, and started looking for a way out of the market.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gently swaying line of woven baskets hanging above the cramped little stall they were hunkered down in was on fire now, which was just another reason that Revy's day sucked.

The gently swaying line of woven baskets hanging above the cramped little stall they were hunkered down in was on fire now, which was just another reason that Revy's day sucked. They'd made it out of Chao-quan Market safely, only having to kill three Sahkaraans, and Revy had bagged two of them herself. She was pretty sure that Rocket would be giving her heart-eyes if this was a cartoon, after seeing her in action. That was the part of the day that wasn't sucking so bad; the rest of it was uniformly shitty. The shittiest thing was that two of those gray motherfuckers were camped out across the corridor of indoor market stalls from them, ready to shoot their balls off if they tried to get past them.

Revy let her head thunk back against the wall behind her as bolts of energy scored and seared the air above, and felt it give and bounce. Rocket, sitting next to her with his gun up between his knees, glanced over at the hollow sound. "Please tell me you have something that can cut through a plywood wall," Revy said.

"Gimme some room and be amazed," Rocket said, turning around to level his gun at the wall. He pressed a switch near the trigger housing, and brilliant blue sparks ignited from a red protrusion in front of the barrels. The sparks solidified into a blue point of flame like a welding torch, and Rocket used it to cut a big, jagged hole in the flimsy plywood.

Revy kicked the cut-out, smoking square free with her boot, and the three of them scrambled through into yet another aisle of stalls. "Rocky-baby, you better put that shit on the gun you make for me, got it?"

"It'll have all the good stuff, don't worry. Which way now?"

Revy could smell curry and onions somewhere close by, to the left, and that meant they were close to the food stalls. "This way," she pointed, and Rocket mounted up on Groot's shoulder again, gun held ready, and followed her lead. The market wasn't as crowded as it should have been, but there were still too many people around for Revy's comfort, which just went to show how used to shooting and gun battles the shit-out-of-luck citizens of this place were, and how poor many of them were -- that there were still this many people in the market after it had been invaded by goddamn aliens meant many of them had no other option.

Groot's height put him literally head and shoulders above the crowd, and once you factored in the raccoon with a gun on his shoulder, the two of them were kind of hard to miss. Invariably, however, people would glance at them, eyes widening comically in surprise -- and then they would turn away, like there was nothing strange going on at all. Revy had seen it before; when the shooting started, it was safer to pretend you hadn't even been there, hadn't seen a fucking thing, and had in fact been home in your jammies with a glass of ovaltine, reading the Bible. The crowd parted in front of Revy like she was Moses, anyway.

She was watching their twelve for any of those gray fuckers coming at them, and Rocket's height on Groot's shoulder gave him a good view of their six. As they had wormed their way out of the rabbit-warren of alleys and stalls in Chao-quan Market, she had noticed that Rocket guided Groot by touching his head, and once she figured out how they moved as a unit, she could move along with them. When Rocket had caught on to her pattern for covering and clearing, he fell right into it, and it was like they'd worked together for years.

"Behind us," Rocket said, and Revy started looking for a better place to be than out in the open in the goddamn aisle. A flash of blue that was too big to be anything but a blue person crossed the narrow corridor up ahead, melted back into the crowd, and Revy cursed under her breath.

"Somethin' blue up ahead of us, they're gonna box us in." There was a sea of people this close to the food stalls, and when the shooting broke out, a lot of these people were going to die.

"How close are we to an exit? Out on the street is better than boxed in."

Revy craned her head and saw an exit door at the end of the corridor -- behind the blue whatsit's position, of course. When she told Rocket, he cursed too, keeping his eyes on the pair of Sahkaraans strolling through the crowd behind them as if they actually belonged, people giving them just as wide a berth as they were giving Revy, Rocket, and Groot. "We're gonna have to shoot our way to the exit. There's too many people."

Revy was struck with inspiration. "Hey, everybody! The Yakuza's coming to shake down the vendors! Get your shit and run!" she screamed as loudly as she could, and the place started to empty out immediately, her words being echoed from one part of the market to the other by more voices taking up the call. Now they were alone in the corridor with the two Sahkaraans behind them, and a bald, blue woman who looked like she was made out of some kind of plastic stepped into the aisle ahead of Revy.

"Fuck. Why is _she_ here?" Rocket groaned.

"You know her?" Revy said, backing up against Groot's chest, knowing that Rocket was up above her on his shoulder, watching her back.

"Un-fucking-fortunately," Rocket said with disgust. "Think you can take the two behind us if we swing around?"

"Yeah, if you can take down Barbie up here," Revy replied. The blue chick was ambling toward them now, in no hurry.

"I can put her down for a little while, but the bitch re-builds herself, it's freaky. We'll have to move fast."

"On three?" Revy asked.

"Yep."

"One, two, three!" Revy counted out, and on three she and Groot swung around, her back still pressed against his chest plates, and as soon as she had a good bead on the fucks behind her, she opened fire. Above her, she heard Rocket's gun make a higher, shriller whine than she'd heard from it before, and she felt the blowback of gas ruffle her hair as the thing roared and screamed and spat out what sounded like a goddamn nuclear missile. She didn't have time to look at the pretty explosion, because she was laying into the aliens behind them for all the little gun Rocket had given her was worth. One of them got his gun up, and as he fired, a spray of branches and vines slammed into place in front of her, protecting her from the splash of blue energy that splattered over it -- Groot had laced his big woody hands together and grown them into a shield.

"I need to see!" she shouted up to Groot, and he opened up what amounted to a gun slit in the shield protecting her. She fired through it, taking down one of the Sahkaraans and wounding the other pretty fucking good. Up over her head, Rocket was firing another missile, and Revy knew what she wanted for Christmas -- it sounded like shrieking death when it left the barrel and the boom was awe-inspiring.

"She's down! Go!" Rocket yelled down to her, and she ducked under Groot's shield and turned to run toward the gaping, shattered hole the missiles had opened in the wall. _Guess we didn't need to find an exit, just make our own,_ she thought, and as they emerged onto the street, she saw a crumpled heap of blue limbs on the pavement, where the woman had been thrown from the force of the missiles Rocket had flattened her with. The sparking, smoking pile of plastic was moving, arms straightening and head snapping back upright, and Revy shuddered. He'd said she could rebuild herself, but Revy hadn't pictured it looking quite so much like the possessed car remaking itself at the end of "Christine."

As Rocket and Groot passed her by, the woman's jaw wedged itself back into place, and she spoke in a voice like rolling crushed gravel: "Tell my sister to stay out of my way, Guardian."

Revy shuddered again, and then they were into the alley and away from that thing, lying there recreating itself from a smoldering, ugly pile of plastic flesh and metal bone. "Okay, that was pretty fucked up, guys," Revy said as they hustled down the narrow alley. "I mean, I've seen some shit, and that was fucked up."

"Nebula is pretty much the definition of fucked up," Rocket said. She heard him tap that badge on his chest again, and speak into it. "Quill, you there?"

"Yeah, little busy," Quill's voice replied, and Revy could hear both lasers and bullets flying in the background noise.

"Us too. Nebula's here."

"Shit. Think she's working for Thanos again?"

"Unlikely," a new voice, a female one, broke in. "She has likely allied herself with someone who wishes to destroy Thanos, and needs an Infinity Stone to do so."

"Well, that's just lovely," Quill said, sighing.

"She said you should stay out of her way, Gamora," Rocket said.

"I will promise no such thing," the woman said forcefully. 

"Rocket, just do what you can to stay ahead of her. Can you still get to Hotel Moscow?" Quill asked. "We ran into the fucking _Yakuza_ , I thought that was just in the movies, but no, these guys are real and they're really, really persistent."

Rocket hit the button to mute his comm. "Revy, can we still get there from here without running into the cartels too?" Rocket asked, and she thought hard for a moment.

"If we go down Kampong, come up next to the police station, we'll be out of most of the worst territory, but we'll have to be out in the open for most of it. It would be better to find someplace to hole up for an hour, let that blue bitch and her pals look for us and leave. There's a bar two blocks down, the Yellow Flag. We can go in the back, I got a room upstairs."

"Sounds good to me," Rocket said. "How close are you to Hotel Moscow, Quill?" he asked, reactivating his comm.

"Almost there, if we can get these Yakuza guys to stop shooting at us."

"Give us an hour to let the heat die off and then we'll resume heading toward Hotel Moscow."

"Got it," Quill said, and the comm connection cut off.

They were in the alley behind the Yellow Flag now, and Revy led them in and up the rickety staircase in the back. The owner, Bao, knew better than to let out the room at the end of the hall on the top floor, because Revy would cut his fucking balls off if she needed to use it and there was already someone occupying it. Once inside the room, Revy went to the window and checked the street outside while Groot sat down on the floor with his back to the door, blocking it off better than a stupid chair under the doorknob ever could. Rocket laid his gun on the bed and sat down next to it, sighing tiredly.

"We should be good here for a while," Revy said, and pulled the single chair in the room over to the window to sit astride it backwards. "Lay down if you want to. I'm watchin' the window and Groot's got the door."

"I am Groot," Groot said.

"He says he won't let anybody in," Rocket translated as he let himself flop down on his back.

"So what's his story?" Revy asked, indulging her curiosity now that they had a minute to breathe. "How come the translator thingie only has him sayin' 'I am Groot' when I can understand you just fine?"

"Don't know, really. I just get what he means. His people are called Flora Colossi, he's a plant."

"What about you?" Revy said, and really she was more curious about Rocket than she was about Groot. It was starting to be harder and harder to remember that there was anything unusual about the way he looked -- partly it was the voice, and partly just him, how smart he was, and how well they worked together, like their minds ran along the same gauge of track. Him not looking like a man was easier, too -- no past associations, no ingrained responses to have to overcome. He no longer looked so much like a raccoon to her, either; he just looked like Rocket.

"I...don't really know. I started out as some kinda lab animal, and I was used for cybernetic and genetic experiments. Made me smart, rebuilt and remade me over and over until I was a fucked up little freak."

"No," Revy disgreed firmly. "Until you were pretty fucking _awesome_. You're the best back-up I've ever had. I think we make a good team."

"You think so?" Rocket asked, turning his head so that he could see her at the window.

"Yeah. You had me at 'I'm gonna build you the biggest fucking gun you've ever seen.'"

"Come with us, when we leave," he said, after a long silence. "We could use you. We do make a good team."

"You're asking me to, to -- go into space and shit? Like, go do whatever it is you do out in _freaking space_?"

"Yeah," he said, and it sounded like he thought she was turning him down.

" _Fuck_ yes," Revy said. "Sign me the fuck up."

"Really?" He propped himself up on his elbow, staring at her.

"You kidding me? Not only will I get outta this shithole for good, I'll get to have you as my permanent back-up." Revy gave one last look out the window, and then got up to sit on the edge of the bed. There was nothing -- no fear, no memories -- keeping her from moving closer to him if she wanted, and it was strange and freeing. It was also freeing to be fairly sure that if she did move closer, he wouldn't assume she meant anything, or try anything. It was the lack of pushback from her fear of being close to a human male that drew her in like gravity. "I like being around you. I want to go. Besides, you promised me a bad-ass space gun."

"Okay. Good," he said, looking a little stunned, like he'd expected her to say no just as a matter of course.

"Rocket, do you copy?" It was Quill, coming through the comm badge.

"Yeah, I'm here," Rocket answered.

"We made it to Hotel Moscow. Gamora is talking to someone named Balalaika, to see if we can find out who brought the stone here and where it went."

"Can she shoot her when they're done talking? Please tell her to kill that Ivan cunt," Revy gritted out.

"Who the hell is _that_?" Quill sputtered.

"That's Revy. She's coming with us when we leave," Rocket said, glancing at her almost shyly.

"Okay," Quill said, sounding bemused and baffled. "Look, the streets are filling up with cartel assholes and alien assholes and it's not gonna be safe for you to try to get here right now. Are you in a good spot to stay until morning?"

"Yeah, we're in a room at the Yellow Flag. Should we try to head for Hotel Moscow tomorrow?"

"Yes. Let us know when. We'll contact you if anything changes, and you do the same," Quill said, signing off.

"Looks like we're staying here tonight," Rocket said to her, lying back down.

Revy glanced toward the window again, and then sighed. They were on the fourth floor, and the nearest fire escape on this side of the building was far enough away that she felt safe assuming that flight or levitation would be needed to get in that way. It struck her that maybe some of these aliens could actually fly, and decided she wanted rest more than she wanted to know the answer. She didn't know about Rocket, but she'd been on the run for most of the day, literally, and she was exhausted.

"Which side of the bed do you want?" she asked, and his eyes snapped open, no longer drifting slowly closed.

"Huh? Oh. I'll sleep on the outside, I guess."

"Suits me. You can protect me with that fucking cannon of yours." Revy crawled across the foot of the bed, past his feet and flopped down on her back between him and the wall. He laid the gun alongside him, and she knew Groot was at the door, guarding it. Despite the fact that Rocket was right beside her, blocking her in from the door, she felt at ease and at peace. She actually felt _safe_. She slept.


End file.
